The North Atlantic Right Whale is called the “right” whale because of its unusual high blubber content–whalers considered it the “right” whale to hunt (ugh). As a result, there are only a few hundred of these great, goofy-looking whales left, which is very sad. The right whale is also known as Eubalaena glacialis, which means “good, or true, whale of the ice.”

• An NPR report talks to a bunch of librarians and one big house publisher about the way ebooks have strained what was traditionally a great relationship between publishers and libraries. (NPR)
• The Bookseller‘s Philip Jones looks at what the DOJ is trying to do to the American ebook marketplace. (FutureBook)
• Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals has deemed Guillaume Apollinaire‘s book, The Exploits of a Young Don Juan, “perverse” in a case against the Turkish publisher and translator. The court unanimously overturned previous acquittals that cited freedom of speech, and now Sel Publishing’s İrfan Sancı and translator İsmail Yerguz could face a sentence of six-ten years. (Hurriyet Daily News)
• “What truly is alarming is the amount of people that get injured on the job.” Hamilton Nolan collects a few more true stories from Amazon workers. (Gawker)
• The Singapore-based bookseller Popular Holdings announced that it has acquired the Borders bookstore brand within the country. With Popular Holding’s own bookstore shutting its doors this month, the company is set to open a new Borders location by the end of the year. (Yahoo!)
• Henry Rollins will be the keynote speaker at the 2013 California Library Association conference. He will wear gym shorts, as is required by federal law. (GalleyCat)
• Zadie Smith is predictably badass in Richard Godwin‘s profile, timed for NW‘s UK paperback release. (London Evening Standard)
• Michelle Dean examines literary retirement à la AliceMunro and PhilipRoth: “it is very hard to understand the letting go.” (Hazlitt)
• Following the past few years’ theories on the language of color perception (see Radiolab), Caroline Alexander examines Homer‘s wine-dark sea. (Lapham’s)
• Now we know what to do with returns: papercrete! An article by Cara Parks on The Good Life Lab: Radical Experiments in Hands-On Living, or why our office is going to have walls 7 feet thick come September (Los Angeles Review of Books)
• This little activist– protesting the firing of children’s librarian Tracie Wilkins in Epping, N.H.– makes his pink-and-purple car look like a Bulldozer of Justice (Seacoast Online).

A song for Wednesday: “Elise” by Blondes